F-ZeroOne

Helicopters can't loop, the movies tell us. No-one said anything about back-flips: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3aEbVD7Sgw

So, you've finally been able to walk past a that statue in the park without staring at it until your eyes water. You no longer flood your room with arc-lights, to get rid of the shadows. You've even stopped spilling your coffee every time you hear a bird singing. You thought you were safe again, didn't you? http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/dw/videos/p00fxf06

I'm definitely no expert, but you might want to look into Grummans "Tomcat 21" proposal - this was to be an updated Tomcat proposed as a cheaper (for a given value of "cheap"!)alternative to the now aborted Naval ATF (essentially, naval F-22 or F-23) requirement. One of the things they proposed was making the Tomcat easier to maintain. In fact, I believe a swing-wing F-22 was even proposed for that requirement as well!It is also possible to update aircraft designs to a degree; the Strike Eagle is a similar shape to a "standard" Eagle but rather different structurally (designed to carry heavier payloads). Edit: oops, Knight26 got in just ahead of me!

You know its a tiltrotor, I know its a tiltrotor, the media on the other hand is having trouble with a thing that can be two things at once [1]. At least one British newspaper referred to the CV-22 Osprey that rescued one of the downed F-15 pilots as a "helicopter" today... Also: its not a vacuum cleaner, its a Dyson. Perfectly engineered for its designated function. [1] I suppose I should be thankful they didn't try to claim that it cures cancer...

The Daily Mail website ran that "Supermoon" thing in a boxout in an article about the disaster, only a couple of days after it happened. I was so angry that if I hadn't been at work I would have punched the screen...

Glad any MWers in the country appear to be okay. I have a couple of contacts in Japan - in fact, I'm due to fly out and meet them in three weeks, will have to see what happens between now and then - and they've reported they're okay if a bit shaken. There is one person I'm quite worried about, though, who lives in Sendai...

Japan may be flying a prototype stealth fighter within 5 years, petition to get it named "Yukikaze" starts now! http://defensetech.org/2011/03/08/japan-to-fly-its-own-stealth-fighter-prototype-by-2014/

I managed to miss the first half-an-hour but - once my brain had given up on its fantasies of wanting to punch the script-writers in the face for insulting its intelligence every five seconds - I, much to my surprise, rather enjoyed the first one. I mean, it has a car chase where two of the vehicles involved are on foot and the third "vehicle" is not just a ninja, but freakin' Snake Eyes, who is what ninjas dream of being when they grow up [1]. Favourite bit? Let the world tremble at the unstoppable speed of the High Velocity Missiles. Nothing can possibly catch something travelling at Mach 5...! [1] Also, freakin' practical ninja. Rest of your colleagues standing around staring at the aforementioned unstoppably fast missiles? Not Snake Eyes.

Miyazaki didn't direct it, I forget the name of the person who did. What always blows my mind about "Grave" is that apparently it was shown as a double bill with Totoro in some Japanese theatres! Edit: ah, sorry, Bri, didn't notice you had answered the question already.

The stripes on the white parts almost make it look like a throwback to the days of corrugated skinning...!

Hmm, can you really call an externally mounted weapons pod "internal"...?

Kikis Delivery Service. Not just my favourite Miyazaki film, not just my favourite anime, but my favourite film full stop. Porco Rosso. Always better than you remember from the last time you watched it. The quality of the image on the Nausicaa Blu-Ray, by the way, is among the best I've ever seen. Of course, everything Miyazaki did, he did first in Future Boy Conan.

The more pictures I see of the J-20 - well, its always difficult to judge on incomplete information, and it would not be the first time the West has been "surprised" - but the more it looks to me like a relatively conventional airframe design given a bit of a stealth makeover (also bearing in mind that prototypes can sometimes be a bit removed from actual, finished articles). Thats purely on visual impressions, though, if hordes of these things suddenly materialise over the Channel and destroy all the worlds supply of Devon scones I'm fully prepared to eat my hat. With butter, jam, and cream on of course.

A lot of that sort of stuff seems to end up on Yahoo! Japan, but a lot of the sellers will only sell to Japanese buyers. There are ways around that, such as proxys like Celga: http://www.celga.com/ Mandarake also have an English language web presence and have held auctions for cels in the past: http://ekizo.mandarake.co.jp/shop/en/ Or, given the shipping charges usually involved, buy a plane ticket. Its probably cheaper.

Pah. Our new Artificially Intelligent Quiz Show Overlord has yet to meet Stephen Fry and Q.I.. (link has a little swearing).

...because one of them is reported to have said "The best place for canards is on someone elses airplane!"...?

Again, off the top of my head - you still have to acquire the targets, which presumes either some sort of sensor system on the airframe or on an airframe linked to all the drones (and its unlikely one modern multi-engine sensor platform would be able to handle, in the very best case, about two hundred or so "friendlies" all at once - theres a reason you have squadron leaders after all. Or, I suppose ground control - better hope they don't work out where you're transmitting from and send a few cruise missiles into the control bunkers, eh?), with "pilots" who probably haven't been trained (regardless of on-line experience) in modern multi-linked fighter combat techniques (Oops, due to sensory overload Drone pilot 67 just flew into your AWACS!). And, although I've only been at the controls of a light aircraft for about 5 minutes total, my lasting impression was, wow, real flying isn't like Ace Combat! Not to mention also finding all the control set-ups, bandwidth and accommodation for the "XBox Air Force"...! I know you're probably not being entirely serious, sorry, just can't help replying...!

Immediate thoughts that spring to mind off the top of my head is that drones still need fuel, possibly someone to fly them so bandwidth, with modern sensor systems might be easily distinguished from more modern platforms/airframes, still require somewhere to take off from, and if presumably you're going to put them all in the air at once, even the stupidest fighter jock is going to work out that maybe he'd best wait until the real threat gives itself away. Plus what are the drones armed with? If its fairly short range IR guided missiles, you could just keep your distance until they run out of fuel. Oh, and the cost; it might be cheaper to make thousands of drones but thats not the same as cheap. Oh, and the F-35 carries four missile internally - if you suspect thats what the bad guys are doing, break out the wing hardpoints or send up the F-18s with 10 AMRAAMs each (I know David is going to point out about maximum carrier take-off weights somewhere here... )and get them to do the dirty work... Its not entirely a bad idea - overwhelming the German radar with chaff ("window") during World War II, along with concentrating the bombers into a "stream" of aircraft did work, but...

Canards can have other uses rather than just agility; the Viggen used them to help shorten take-off/landing runs, though its worth pointing out that the Viggens canards weren't like "modern" canards; IIRC they even had their own ailerons...

I'm not sure if the Czech and Polish squadrons were specifically formed as "crack" squadrons, but they did have one invaluable trait that certainly made them pretty damn good - experience. That put them one up on many RAF pilots who often had plenty of flying experience but not so much fighting experience (they also had a rather obvious hatred for their opponents, and this may have encouraged many of them to invoke one of the principles of that eras air-to-air combat - get closer!). They were so good that the RAF became a bit suspicious about their claims during the Battle of Britain, and sent a RAF observer up with them during action to find out. Upon return, its said he rather shakily pointed out that "What they claimed, they did indeed get!".

Well, its certainly the loudest I've heard personally - I once saw a F-14 make a flyby and I don't remember that being as loud, but that could just be selective memory...

Well, thats it for Harriers in the UK. Last "operational" mission today, which was basically a flypast of several RAF bases. No longer will airshow crowds have to worry about being deafened by Pegasus engines...

Yes, as far as I know there aren't any other Figma UY figures. Bit of a shame for a series that had a cast of thousands. It'd be great to have a Ran, Benten and Oyuki to go with her...

Max Hastings has pointed out in Nemesis that the Japanese rulers did not do much to discourage, and almost cultivated, a "culture of death" though, particularly towards the end of the war. Although the kamikazes [1] were indeed voluntary, the Japanese leadership did seem to encourage the throwing away of life, often to little practical effect. To quote Cryptonomicon: "When are you going to learn that 'Banzai!' charges don't <bleep> work?!" "All the people who learnt that were killed in 'Banzai!' charges... " [1] There was, in fact, a kamikazes survivors club. Its not quite as odd an idea as it sounds; leaving aside those who couldn't carry out their mission for whatever reason (for example, the great ace Saburo Sakai, who was thwarted by bad weather), there was at least one kamikaze who survived his aircraft being completely destroyed by flak. And if that sounds even more unlikely, the same thing happened to a RAF pilot over Malta once...